Study
Social signal learning of the waggle dance in honey bees
Dong, S.; Lin, T.; Nieh, J. C.; Tan, K.
Science, 2023
Colonies were established containing only bees of the same age, so that no experienced dancer existed to be followed, and their dances were compared with those of bees raised in normal colonies where older dancers were present.
- Studied in
- Apis mellifera
- Sample size
- colonies of same-aged bees with and without experienced dancers
Bees with no opportunity to follow experienced dancers still danced, but with persistently larger directional errors and disordered encoding of distance. Some deficits improved with practice; the distance error did not.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
The waggle dance has a substantial innate component, and its accurate performance additionally depends on social learning from experienced dancers.
How NatureHQ reads it
This complicates the textbook version usefully. The dance was the classic example of a fully innate signal, and it turns out that part of it has to be learned by following other bees — which puts an insect into the same category as a songbird learning its song. The dance is still not a language, and this does not move it towards one. What it moves is where the boundary between instinct and tradition sits, which was drawn in the wrong place.
- A single species and a manipulated colony structure that does not occur naturally.
- Which aspect of following a dancer is doing the teaching is unidentified.
- Persistent distance error was measured in one experimental setting.
Raising a colony of bees with no experienced dancer in it
Is the waggle dance entirely innate, or does a bee have to follow experienced dancers to perform it properly?
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.
Animal communication
A great deal of animal signalling is produced automatically by the animal’s state, not chosen — and that is one of the things that makes it unlike speech.
Honey bee
Bees raised with no experienced dancer to follow still dance — but they get the direction wrong more often, and never fully fix their distance signalling.
Published by: American Association for the Advancement of SciencePublished in Science or Science Advances (AAAS).
doi.org/10.1126/science.ade1702
Checked against Crossref on 2026-09-28, and they agree on the title, the authors and the year.
NatureHQ summarises research in its own words and does not reproduce published text. Reviewed 2026-08-31.